- The place?

Boston's North End, one of America's oldest and most vibrant city neighborhoods.

- These are the most amazing streets in Boston.

- The event?

An explosion that floods the neighborhood streets... with molasses?

- A what?

A molasses flood?

- 21 people killed, 150 people injured.

Enormous property damage throughout the North End.

- The question: can you still smell that molasses here more than a century later?

- Of all of our senses, smell is the most mysterious, and as scientists, we understand the least.

- I'm Edgar B. Herwick III.

My mission: to explore lesser known tales, and investigate the everyday mysteries hiding in plain sight all around us.

- Should I taste it, or...?

- No, definitely don't taste it.

This is The Curiosity Desk.

(low rhythmic music) (low rhythmic music ending) Ah, molasses.

That thick, dark, bittersweet syrup with a distinct earthy aroma.

A byproduct of the sugar making process.

These days, it's a bit of a specialty ingredient, used in things like gingerbread cookies and barbecue sauce.

But back in America's Colonial era, it was a staple.

Molasses is what Boston baked beans were baked in, and it's why Boston brown bread was brown.

Now, not only did American colonists eat it, they also drank it, lots of it.

George Washington had a pretty good recipe for molasses beer, but it was mostly consumed as Colonial New England's favorite spirit, rum.

(low rhythmic music) (items crashing) Now, this jar here is 12 ounces worth.

So just imagine how big the tank was that stood right here in Boston's North End a century ago, that held more than 2,000,000 gallons of it.

On a Wednesday afternoon, in January 1919, that tank burst, and all that gooey stuff came hurtling through the streets at a startling 35 miles an hour.

Buildings were destroyed, people were killed.

Now, it may have happened a long time ago, but what's come to be known as the Great Molasses Flood still captivates people today, even Emmy winners.

- 'Cause I was talking about the Great Molasses Flood.

- Uh-huh.

- Make some noise for that.

(Seth laughing) (low rhythmic music) - Today, we examine what happened on that fateful day, explore how its impact has stretched on for decades, and investigate a curious urban legend that some folks here today swear is true.

That on the right day, in the right spot, you can still smell that molasses.

- Smell the molasses?

I can't say I ever have.

- Not that I've noticed.

- (sniffing) I think they're wrong.

(laughing) - To understand why a tank of molasses was built here in the first place, ya have to understand a little bit about Boston's North End.

(bright dramatic music) If there's anywhere in Boston where smell is gonna be a big part of the story, it's here.

The neighborhood is less than half a square mile, but it is packed with a seemingly endless array of restaurants and a melange of aromas.

- We smell pasta everywhere, the pizza.

- Great pastries.

- It's real food, (laughing) if that makes sense.

- Its specialty is a kind of 21st-century take on old world Italian charm.

From red brick buildings and narrow alleyways to European-style cafes and bakeries.

Plus, unique summertime festivals, where things like this happen.

(rhythmic music) This is the flight of the angel, the finale of the annual Fisherman's Feast, started in 1910 by Sicilian fishermen who populated this waterfront neighborhood.

- Silencio!

- There's something about it, especially when you grew up here, and to kind of relive it again.

- It's still that old world community.

- It's homey.

- It's authentic.

- It's perfect.

- I like everything in the North End.

- The name "North End" refers to this being the northern end of the Shawmut Peninsula.

Now, Shawmut is derived from the Algonquin word "Mashauwomuk," the name given to this area by Indigenous people who lived here for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of English colonists in the early 1600s.

A number of Puritan big wigs lived here in the Colonial era.

As the American Revolution dawned a century later, so did Paul Revere.

Oh, speaking of Revere, that whole lanterns in the church window, "one if by land, two if by sea," "the Red Coats are coming" thing?

Thing that happened here too.

(horse neighing) In the mid-1800s, the North End developed into one of Boston's most densely populated immigrant neighborhoods.

And that is a big reason why that huge rickety tank ended up here.

First came the Irish.

Later, waves of Jewish immigrants from places like Poland and Russia established a thriving community here, along Salem Street.

But eventually, it would be the thousands of immigrants from Italy who would shape and reshape this neighborhood into what we see today.

- This is the closest thing you can get to going to Italy itself.

- It's kind of like a small town in the middle of the city, yeah.

- My uncle had a grocery store that didn't have a name on the outside.

Everybody knew it was just Uncle Frankie's.

- Italians were in the majority here by 1903, when James V. Donnaruma founded La Gazzetta del Massachusetts.

That was an Italian language newspaper, still published today as a weekly in English under the name the Post-Gazette, and under the direction of his granddaughter, Pam Donnaruma.

- "It's our policy to help preserve the ideals and sacred traditions of this, our adopted country, the United States of America.

To strive unceasingly to quicken the public's sense of civic duty.

In all ways to aid in making this country greater and better than we found it."

- Wow.

- We keep this in there because it is what he did, trying to make it better for the Italians when they came here because they had nothing, no food, no clothes.

And they didn't speak English, so they needed someone.

In fact, you know, the North End is all built in little paeses of Italy.

- [Edgar] Yeah.

- So everything that happens down here is from the beginning of time.

(bright rhythmic music) I mean, if you go to a corner and talk to a bunch of guys, they'll talk about when their grandfathers and fathers did this on this corner and did that over here.

And this was here, and that was there.

It's family to family to family, and it's passed on.

(bright rhythmic music continues) The most fun thing about the North End is that you hear these stories all the time.

You get a bunch of people together, and they all remember the stories.

There are reasons why families do want to still be here.

They want to be in the city, they want their children to grow up in the city instead of growing up in suburbia and, you know, you don't know your neighbor.

Everybody knows everybody down here still.

You know, you can walk out the door and sit and talk to people.

You're never alone when you're here.

You just couldn't be alone.

(pensive rhythmic music) - Today, the North End is a desirable and increasingly expensive neighborhood, fueled in part by its history and unique character.

Character born out of the immigrant experience.

(pensive rhythmic music) - The majority of Italians here had still not become citizens.

Therefore, they had very little to say about what would happen in their own neighborhood.

- And so it was a politically easy place to plunk an enormous unwieldy tank full of molasses, which like nearly every other product at the time, had been drafted into the war effort.

- During the First World War, the molasses was here and used in the production of nitroglycerin, TNT, high explosives.

- So, what happened?

- Almost from day one, the tank is leaking.

Children from the neighborhood would come down and scoop up molasses that had pooled around the bottom of the tank.

So, people knew about the tank leaking.

There was this foreboding sense that something was not quite right.

(bright mystifying music) On January 15th, 1919, the molasses tank collapsed and it gave way, and it caused an enormous disaster and tragedy.

The molasses that came out of that tank came out fast and hard, 35 miles an hour at the outset, about 35-feet high, 2.3 million gallons of molasses.

Think of this as a tidal wave that just takes up everything in its path: people, horses, wagons.

It destroys the overhead train trestle that ran from South Station to North Station.

(bright mystifying music continues) And some of the injuries - broken backs, broken pelvises, fractured skulls - The wave causes it, or the debris.

They're taken up with automobiles, with wood, with bricks, you know, that are inside of the waves.

- It's unbelievable.

- It is unbelievable.

Harrowing and unbelievable.

- As for the big question, can you still smell the molasses?

- You could smell it for years afterwards.

Boston gas meter readers in the 1960s said when they went into those basements to read meters, they could smell molasses.

- So the scent of molasses was detectable in the 1960s, but can you still smell it today?

We'll get there.

First, let's take a moment to remember that the flood and its aftermath were experienced by real people, and chronicling the lives of those who worked and played and lived and died here is of particular interest to the North End Historical Society and its president, Tom Damigella.

In January of 1919, what was the character of this neighborhood?

- It was a ghetto.

There were cold-water flats.

In some cases, they had no bathrooms in their apartments, they might have one in the hallway that everybody used.

For most of the week, they were working and they didn't have the luxury of doing those things that we take... We take a shower every day.

That was not true at one time.

And when I said a ghetto, I'm not to discriminate or say something nasty about anybody, but it was basically, people would use the term a slum.

- You know, this is 100 years plus ago that this happened now, but is this something that's still part of the neighborhood- - Yes.

- And part of the history?

- Well, you know what?

People are bored with history sometimes.

You know that if you had a history class- - What?

You're kidding me.

- In high school, everybody hated it, but I used to like it.

- People are bored with history sometimes?

- Yeah, I know, I'm sorry.

But I find it fascinating, so I knew about it, but a lot of people really didn't know about it.

But what happened over time, as the North End became more of a historical landmark in people's minds, and boy, the North End just took off.

- Have you ever heard of the Great Molasses Flood?

- Yes, it's over 100 years old now.

- Sure, that happened on Commercial Street.

- Where it spilled is actually where I used to have recess.

- My grandmother always spoke of it, 'cause she was a little girl when it happened and she remembered it.

- When you talk about this molasses, who lived here and how it affected people, this was a gooey ooze that people got stuck in.

They started to pump salt water out of the harbor.

That was washing it away better than anything else.

Plain water wasn't doing it.

Now, it went on for weeks, months.

People actually went home and they were sticky.

So sometimes they'd grab something, like the doorknob to the apartment, they had molasses on it.

So that's where the rumor comes about people could still smell it.

Some people, when they think about this, they don't know those stories.

But the interesting part, when you do read their stories and they talk about those hard times, they all - and I tell ya, this is bein' Italian - they all talked about the family, and the neighbors, and the people that lived here took care of each other.

And when you talk to North Enders that lived here 100 years ago, 50 years ago, they'll tell you that over and over again.

"We didn't have much, but you know what?

We had good times with each other."

- One of those North Enders was Frank Favazza, who was just a boy on January 15th, 1919.

What he saw that day stayed with him for the rest of his life.

(oscillating piano music) - The big molasses, I remember that I didn't hear the explosion, but I'd heard about it and I went down there that same day.

And I remember a big piano, if it was a player piano or what, floatin' in the... Well, it wasn't floatin'.

Well, it was floatin' because the whole mass was goin', you know?

Don't nothin' floats on molasses.

But it was, oh, it was high, feet high.

(low metrical music) - My grandfather, he just loved to tell stories.

I don't want to say he exaggerated, but they can get, you know, a little contorted a little bit.

But, I enjoyed all the stories.

And he would tell them, and retell them, and retell them, and it didn't matter.

(bright rhythmic music) I can see the molasses on there.

- Yeah, I think...

Wait.

(sniffing) Yup, I can smell the molasses on the shoes.

(Keith laughing) - He was born in 1905, and lived in the North End most of his life.

He goes, "Here, it's like a parade."

He goes, "I look out my window and I, 'Hey Tony, hey Josie, how ya doin'?"

Ya know?

He loved the commotion.

I remember, it was St. Anthony's Feast, I actually felt like I was in Italy.

And I just remember looking up at this big guy, and his hand holding my hand, you know, a little memory.

(gentle piano music) He's just a loving guy.

He was my best friend, really.

- It was just the way that the paper says it.

And that smell of molasses lingered on for months and months and months.

It took years before it really, really... Because molasses, you know, no matter if it rains or whatever weather, it stays for a long while.

Eventually, even we evaporate.

- (laughing) "Evaporate" was the key word.

His voice on the tape sounds like he's right here, so you know, I imagine he's here.

I thought it was very prophetic the way he said that, "we will all disappear."

And you know, he did, but I'm tryin' to keep him alive, you know?

- [Edgar And Keith] Yeah.

- It's pretty clear that at the very least, the idea that you can still smell the molasses lingers here in the North End.

"Neighborhood folklore has it that you can smell the ill sweet remains in the summer's hottest weather."

- Mm-hmm.

And we do have hot weather here in the summer.

(laughing) - I don't think you can, (laughing) it's been a long time.

- You can still smell the sweet molasses.

I smell it, and I've been smelling it since I was a little kid.

- It's smelling a little molasses-y right now.

- You know, if you had a detector, you'd probably see spots.

Who knows?

- And I tell ya, when I was livin' here, I tried to see if I could smell it and (sniffing) nothin'.

(Edgar laughing) - But come on!

Is that even conceivably possible?

I mean, even if there was still molasses from that day, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the neighborhood, is the human nose capable of detecting it?

For that answer, we turned to science, and a couple of people who really know the nose.

Do you think it is possible that people are actually smelling and detecting molasses from this flood in the North End more than 100 years after this happened?

What do you say?

(wheels rumbling) And why stop there?

I mean, does the average person even know what molasses smells like?

Can they distinguish it from the myriad of other smells wafting around the North End on any given day?

So, here we go.

We devised a little smell test.

Now, as we've established, there's no shortage of bricks here in the North End.

So, we decided to use bricks as our vessel.

As for the scents, well, molasses of course.

Ooh!

And then two items whose smells are guaranteed to be detected around these parts.

One, which we figured would never reasonably be mistaken for molasses.

It's a shame to do this to such a delicious piece of pizza.

Ugh!

And the other, which just might, since it has things like sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in it.

I'm talking about that dessert among Italian desserts, cannoli.

Or ricotta cannoli, as they might say here.

Then we've got one more brick, which we're not gonna do anything to.

No scent whatsoever, just a plain brick.

Now we just need to flag down some curious passersby.

Here we go.

We're gonna ask you to do something kinda weird.

I'm gonna bring some bricks up near your nose, and you're gonna take a deep breath.

Close as you can, and I'll sorta help guide you.

'Cause I don't want you to like, hit your face.

- Yeah, I can see myself doin' that, so.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

You're looking for the smell of molasses.

- Molasses.

- Yeah.

If you don't smell molasses, just describe what it is you do smell.

- Okay.

- If anything.

- Aw, man, that's tricky 'cause I've never had molasses before.

- Alright, well, we'll see.

So, get that blindfold on.

- Okay.

- It's gonna mess up my mascara.

- Nah, you're gonna look great.

- Wait, I missed the rules.

- The rules are pretty simple, just tell us what ya smell.

- It smells like vinegar.

(buzzer blaring) - Like coffee.

(buzzer blaring) - Teriyaki beef?

- Like teriyaki beef.

(buzzer blaring) How much of smell is the brain, and having nothing to do with the nose, you know what I mean?

- Well, I mean, everything is the brain, so.

(laughing) - Tell me, can ya smell some molasses?

- No.

- Here's what we think is happening.

When you smell something in the world, small molecules kind of float off of it, okay, these are called volatiles.

Right?

So when you smell your morning coffee, there's some steam that comes up, and with it comes about 800 separate chemicals that actually float through the air and impact a structure inside your nose that's filled with a type of cell called a neuron.

A neuron's the kinda cell that lets you think and process information in your brain.

But there's a little clutch of these guys that live actually outside of your brain, in your nose.

- There's about 20,000,000 olfactory sensory neurons.

In fact, the people with a normal healthy sense of smell, we're constantly getting new sensory neurons.

So about more or less once a month, you're sort of getting a new nose, a new crop of sensory neurons.

- That's pretty cool.

- And these neurons detect all of these little chemicals and send information about what you're smelling to your brain.

And your brain synthesizes information about all those 800 different chemicals, what they are, how much there are, and turns that into a single unitary perception of your morning coffee.

- So it sounds really simple actually.

- There are basic things we don't understand.

- How would you describe that smell?

- So that smells like an aerosol of a flower.

(buzzer blaring) - It smells like bacon there.

(laughing) - It smells like bacon?

Don't hit yourself.

- Oh, it smells like cheese.

- Yeah, it smells like- - It smells like cheese?

- It smells like cheese.

- Dirty feet.

- Yeah.

(buzzer blaring) - We don't think molasses?

- No.

- No, definitely not?

- No.

- 100% sure?

- 100% sure.

- But we think maybe either feet or cheese.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

(Sarah laughing) - So if I were to give you a smell and ask you to describe it, and I would give somebody else that same smell, I think you and your friend would describe often the smell as being different in some way, right?

Not because you're perceiving the smell differently, but because it's hard to describe what we're smelling.

- It's like a sweet potato chip.

Like, it smells sweet and salty.

- Leathery.

- It's leathery.

- Like a powdered cheese.

- Okay, like a pot of cheese?

- What's those sticks?

- What's those sticks, what's those sticks?

Anybody, what's those sticks?

What are those sticks?

(Linda laughing) I don't know what sticks!

- Smell is a sense that's highly suggestible.

So it's really dependent on context and your expectations.

And so if you're expecting to smell something, often, your ability to detect it and understand it is really, really heightened, and it's one of the kind of superpowers we have.

In terms of our senses, our ability to kinda make predictions about what we're gonna experience based upon our expectations is one of the ways that we make sense of the world.

So this is a feature of our brains, it's not a bug, really, but it also means that maybe people are tricking themselves into thinking they're smelling molasses.

- I think that could be molasses.

- Alright, that could be molasses.

Possible molasses here.

Alright, alright.

- Certainly, the urban legend aspect is a very, very powerful manipulator.

So people will say, on the basis of other people saying that they can smell something, that they can also smell something.

- And don't do it just because of what she said, you be your own person.

- One of the really interesting things about scent is it's invisible.

And we as humans are extraordinarily visually oriented, and we're also very, what-is-it oriented, like we need to know what something is.

So if we are told that there is something there, we are very much more likely to believe our ears or our eyes than we are our nose.

And people have thought that, you know, humans are not very good smellers.

- Maybe I just have a bad nose.

- I don't know.

- Try one more time.

- Can I fail this?

- No, there is no right or wrong answer here.

- I think we're just at the beginnings of the science, but there is something to the idea that our brains are really building objects, right?

That you see a lemon and you expect it to be a certain shape, a certain color, a certain weight, and to have a certain smell.

And your brain really binds all those things together to create perception.

- So if I give you the suggestion of a smell being here, and your brain kinda turns on to sniffing and paying attention, you're gonna be smelling something probably.

You may be labeling it as a molasses, and it's not, but your brain is actually acting like it's smelling, so then it is the same, sort of.

- Yeah.

Okay, interesting, yeah.

Wow.

Okay, cool.

- I'm tryin' to remember what molasses smells like.

- Give it a minute, get that in your brain.

- Smell is special in that it was the first sense that evolved.

And so if you look at the structure of the brain, your nose is connected to a part of your brain called the olfactory bulb.

And that part of the brain connects directly to parts of your brain involved in memory and emotion, and that's very different from your other senses.

And so your brain's kind of hardwired to have feelings about what you're smelling at any given moment in time.

- Ew.

- Ew?

(Linsey and Sarah laughing) We got an "ew."

- I don't know if it's molasses I smell, but it smells like when you walk in a bakery.

- Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!

(Linda laughing) - Just stick it up there!

- Ooh, sorry there.

You can still smell the molasses from the Molasses Flood.

Possible?

- I'm gonna say yes.

(laughing) - Really?

- I think it's possible.

First of all, if there are pockets of molasses that are left over, which is possible, it's likely that those pockets of molasses still smell.

So just think about oil in the ground, right?

So dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, and their bodies got dissolved into crude oil.

And when we pull it up out of the ground...

It smells- - There's a smell.

- There's definitely a smell.

- Okay, alright.

- Okay, so that's argument number one.

Argument number two is we know a little bit about the molecules that actually smell in molasses.

And so they include things like vanillin and salicylic acid, which is wintergreen.

When you look at those molecules, some of them, like vanillin, actually aren't very volatile at all.

And what that means is that it sticks around for a very, very long time once it's dissolved.

And so it could be that little bits of vanillin are coming off of the molasses, that there's a little pocket up somewhere in the North End, and that's what you're detecting.

The last thing I'll say is there's some molecules, some volatile molecules, that humans can smell at one part in a 1,000,000,000 maybe even one part in 1,000,000,000,000.

And so very, very small concentrations of smells can elicit perceptions and memories in us, in humans.

- It smells like a cannoli.

(bell chiming) - Yeah, it's like cheese.

- Like cheese on this one.

Okay.

(bell chiming) - Nothin'?

- Nothin'.

- Yeah.

- It smells like molasses.

- It smells like molasses?

- Mm-hmm.

- 100% sure?

- Yes.

(bell chiming) - We have a winner.

Take that blindfold off.

Look at that.

- Most humans aren't very good at judging how good smellers they are.

- I think most humans are not good at judging how good they are at almost anything, right?

There was nothin' on that last one, so you got that one right.

- It's the only one I got right.

(laughing) - No, no, no.

- Okay.

- Everyone has a unique nose, except if you have an identical twin.

So every single person has a slightly different set of genes that are expressing the olfactory sensory neurons that are picking up all the chemicals that are around you.

- Yes, that's definitely molasses.

(sniffing) - It could be the case that some people have more copies of a receptor that will enable them to smell kind of burnt, sugary types of odors, let's just say.

And that those people may be more likely to be the ones that say, "I smell the molasses."

- Okay, it's like a syrupy like... - Yeah, it's like a weird, syrupy beef teriyaki kinda thing.

- Right, right, right.

Okay.

- But my deep down hunch is that the molasses from 1919 is no longer detectable to the average person in the North End.

(traffic whooshing) - So, is it true?

Is it technically conceivably possible that there are a few molecules of molasses still lingering somewhere here, more than a century later, and that sometimes people can still smell them?

- I believe it's possible.

- Perhaps, yes.

- No?

- No.

Maybe.

(laughing) - It's a mystery.

- Yeah.

- What seems far more likely is that for those who do smell it, it is because they want to smell it.

- If you believe it, then you can make it happen.

(laughing) - And maybe that desire to connect with the past is just as real, just as visceral as the sweet smell of molasses on a hot summer's day.

- We're gonna have lunch pretty soon?

(laughing) We need to remember it.

We need to remember what the people survived and how they picked themselves up, you know, what they had to go through to keep this neighborhood the way it is.

- This tragedy happened when there were almost no regulations whatsoever.

The court case goes for three years.

It's an enormous court case, 1,000 witnesses, 1,500 exhibits.

There is a grand jury that sits and does not return any indictments, largely because there were no laws broken at the time 'cause there were no laws on the books.

Keep in mind that this tank didn't even require a building permit because it was considered a receptacle, not a building.

So, the whole host of things that we take for granted today in the areas of building construction standards, almost all of that comes from the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.

- This is the birth of the nation, the cradle of liberty's right here.

And this is where America began before it became America.

And the molasses explosion is just one more period piece that you go, "Wow, those things really did happen."

(curious oscillating music) - Until next time, I'm Edgar B. Herwick III.

Stay curious out there.

(Edgar sniffing) Ah!

(bright oscillating music fading) - (laughing) Slow as molasses.

- I don't wanna hit the table.

- You're good.

Right here.

- Okay.

(laughing) - This is so funny, you guys.

This is the plan, is to find strangers, blindfold them, and make them smell things.

(laughing) - Yeah, what could go wrong?

(Jackie laughing) Tell us what you smell.

- Is there something in front of me now?

- We're gonna bring it close to your face.

- Now I'm tryin' to remember what molasses smells like, to be totally honest with you.

- You're really stretching my molasses knowledge.

- This one smells more like savory?

- Savory.

- Yeah.

- I think of molasses as having a very specific smell.

- Can you smell the molasses on this one?

- Yeah.

- Oh no, it's definitely this one.

That's the one for sure, that's the molasses.

- That was fun, so like, what is this for?

(everyone laughing)